


Rory Red Coat

by akamarykate



Category: Little Red Riding Hood (Fairy Tale)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 10:26:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2809043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akamarykate/pseuds/akamarykate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"A baker keeps her secrets," Gran always told Rory. What would happen to Gran if someone--or something--took them away?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rory Red Coat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ag_sasami](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ag_sasami/gifts).



Saturday morning. Halfway to Gran's. They're out on the street already: the homeless guys who've slept in doorways; the college boys staggering home in hangover hazes; the construction workers and street repairmen who take the city through its endless cycles of wearing down and rebuilding. Their orange vests punctuate the half-lit streets like fat fireflies. 

Rory strides through a forest of eyes--watchful, sly, hungry. Her red coat attracts attention she doesn't want. Any other day, she'd be tucked up in a grey hoodie, jeans, and sneakers. Head down, plugged into her earbuds. Nothing to see here. Saturdays are different. On Saturdays she can turn up her music until the drumbeats crash around inside her skull and she'll still attract their eyes.

It's the coat. Bright as her name, down to her knees, cinched at the waist, glowing like a jewel against the grim gristle of the city. A gift from her grandmother when she turned sixteen. It made her best friend Kari drool (" _Don't call it a hand-me-down. It's vintage!_ "). Rory hates wearing it on this walk, but Gran won't buzz her in without it. Not because she's the imperious sort who insists upon her gifts being used, but because more often than not, it's the only part of Rory she recognizes on the HD feed of her security cam. Mom's tried to tell Rory it's Gran's eyesight that's going, but it's not, it's her memory, and they both know it.

Mom used to take this walk with her, right up until about a year ago when Gran gave Rory the coat. Back when they'd started the Saturday visits, Rory had been at eye level with the homeless guys, and they were usually sleeping, or pretending to be, when she passed. She'd been too small see over the barriers that the construction workers hang on now (" _Hey, pretty, don't be shy, give us a grin," over and over again, endless white noise threaded with blood-dark threads of want and demand_ ). Back when they'd started the visits, they'd gone to Gran's with a empty basket and brought it back full of Rory and Gran's Baking Adventures: crumbly cookies, chewy brownies, eight-year-old Rory's weird combinations of fruit, like banana/kiwi and orange/apple, tucked into buttery tarts that dissolved on her tongue. 

"Rory Red Coat," Gran called her when she buzzed them in. Of course, Rory didn't have the same coat then, and sometimes it wasn't even a coat; Gran had given her an endless succession of red scarves, hats, and sweaters. Red had been the signature color of Gran's bakery. Mom would read a book or watch television while Rory and Gran made messes in the kitchen, spills of flour and sugar and cream sprinkled with eggshells that congealed on the counter while their Baking Adventures browned in the oven. Gran would read out recipes from her spattered, cloth-covered binder, the same one she'd used when she'd had her own bakery, the most popular one in the city. Her secrets were traced in spidery scrawls so archaic and weird that Rory, who'd learned to read before she was four, couldn't make them out. She still can't. 

"A baker keeps her secrets," Gran had said when Rory asked if she could transcribe the recipe for Cherry Cream Torte, the signature dish at Gran's bakery, for a class project on family history. Her eyes had gone from blue-grey to slate. "If you don't guard your recipes, you might as well give away your heart and soul." Rory thought then that if all the secrets, all the recipes came out of her, Gran would cave in on herself, like a failed soufflé or a pie whose filling has cooked down to an inch or so, leaving a hollow shell of crust that collapses at the first touch of the knife.

After lunch, Mom would make Rory carry the basket, heavy with treats for the week ahead, all the way home. "She has no business spoiling you," Mom said every week. "All that fat and sugar. Heaven knows _I_ won't eat any of it, and you shouldn't either." Somehow, though, spice cookies and strawberry tarts and tiny, perfect cinnamon rolls found their way into Rory's lunch sacks; somehow, the basket was always empty by Friday afternoon.

Now, the visits are different. The basket is heavy on the way to Gran's, loaded with essential oils and organic health food monstrosities suggested by Mom's holistic practitioner. More often than not it's empty on her way home. Now the visits are more obligation than adventure.

And, now, of course, Rory's old enough to go on her own. If Mom knows the danger is greater now that Rory can see over the construction barriers and the men can see back, now that the homeless guys push themselves up in their doorways to meet her eyes with canine smiles and crude invitations and hungry, hungry eyes, she doesn't seem to care. Mom tells her friends she's relieved to have brought Rory safely through her childhood. Rory feels anything but relieved, alone in the forest of men's eyes and words with only Gran's vintage coat to shield her.

She and Gran spend most of her visits watching--and critiquing---competition cooking shows. ( _"What an idiot! You can't just dump in all the flour at once. If you don't alternate the dry and wet ingredients, you'll end up with clumpy cake!"_ ) If it's a good day, the contestants' incompetence will drive Gran into the kitchen. She'll bang bowls and whisk flour with salt while Rory surreptitiously checks the eggs and butter to make sure they aren't spoiled.

These days the Baking Adventures are as perilous as they are rare. Gran has trouble remembering even the simplest steps. Halfway through a rise of cinnamon rolls, she'll be in burst into tears because she thinks they've forgotten the yeast, and no reassurance from Rory will calm her. Or she'll overheat the chocolate ganache for a cake and stare at her hands while the apartment fills with the acrid, burning smell. 

"I don't remember what to do," Gran will say, tears filling her eyes. "Rory, I don't remember."

Rory will guide her to the sofa and turn on _Battle of the Bakeries_ or _Cupcake Smackdown_ , then clean up the mess alone. She'll put the binder, once red, now faded to a pinkish grey-brown, back in its spot on the bookshelf. She'll set out a healthy lunch, just as Mom's directed, kiss Gran good-bye, and text Kari and Ellis all the way home about boys and homework and their Saturday night plans, trying to hide as much from what she's leaving behind as from the offers and taunts from the guys on the street.

* * *

The smell hits her on a Saturday morning in the middle of fall. The sun's barely up, a few beams shining between the skyscrapers and burning her eyes as her basket, heavy with kale soup and gluten-free muffins, tugs at her arm. Four homeless guys on a bus bench ogle her as she passes, and though the music in her ear buds is cranked up all the way, just the movement of their cracked lips makes her feel dirty.

But the smell, the smell, it comes around the corner of an alley and sets her mouth to watering before she can draw a second breath. It brings back mornings at Gran's years ago: yeasty, crisp, buttery, a waft of sweetness that makes her stomach growl, even though she just had one of Mom's egg white omelets for breakfast.

She hesitates at the alley. It's dark, cluttered with dumpsters, but there's no one there. No men, no gangs, no boys. Just a shaft of light in its depths from a window or a half-open door, she can't really tell. She backs up a few yards, looks down the street of sleepy shops. None of them are open yet. It must be someone cooking up breakfast in their apartment. Whatever they're having, it's going to be a lot better than Mom's omelet. 

Gran is sleepy when she gets there. She rouses herself just enough to let Rory in, then shuffles back to the couch. Rory follows her, sits with her for two episodes of _Pie Queens_ and one of _Cake Quake_ and searches on her phone for news about any new bakeries opening up in the city, but finds nothing. When she comes back from Gran's, basket empty, stomach still growling, the smell is gone and the alley is dark.

* * *

The next week, the catcalls are tinged with knife edges ( _"Just a smile, it won't cost you anything, what the hell is wrong with you?"_ ) but the smell is back--still buttery and yeasty, but tinged this time with a waft of citrus. She ventures a little further into the alley, where she can tell the shaft of light is coming from a door propped open at ground level. When Rory backtracks and walks down that street, the shop that end of the block is boarded up. 

The Saturday after that, the fall air has turned cool enough to be crisp, to carry promises, and the smell--no, it's too heavenly to be a mere smell; it's a scent, a perfume, a _presence_ \--nearly knocks Rory off her feet. She had an argument with her mom for breakfast because she could not stomach another beet and cabbage smoothie, so this time, she doesn't even hesitate. She marches to the shaft of light, a half-open metal door tagged with spray-paint symbols like everything else on her route, and sticks her head inside. She has to swallow a mouthful of drool before she can speak. "Hello?"

Rory expects to be answered by an old-world voice, a voice like Gran's, but it's young and deep, definitely masculine. "If you're here to rob the place, I don't have anything worth taking except some copper pans. And I'm armed with a pizza cutter."

"Sorry, I'm not--" Pulling out her earbuds, Ruby steps inside and peers around the corner. A boy--no, a man, but a very young man, older than the boys at school but not by much--stands next to a prep table, his green apron, dark hair, and sharp-lined face covered in flour. He is, indeed, brandishing a pizza cutter. "I'm not here to rob you. I just smelled something amazing and wondered what was going on." Beyond the circles of light on the prep table and the rickety desk tucked into a corner, an open doorway leads to the storefront. Display cases loom like giant teeth in a dark mouth. "Are you opening a bakery?"

Something about the curve of his smile holds a secret, like Gran's coded handwriting. "Eventually." He turns back to the mound of dough on the prep table, slapping at it haphazardly. "Doing some weekend practice runs. What's a colorful girl like you doing in a place like this?"

"Visiting my grandmother," Rory says primly. When he glances back over his shoulder, she holds up her basket. "Bringing her lunch. I'm Rory."

"Tate. She's sick?"

"Old."

He looks her up and down, one more pointed look at the basket. "You're honest, Rory. I like that about you. Want some orange rolls?"

"I'm sure Gran would like them," she says, because Mom would kill her for taking carbs from strangers. "But I don't have any cash."

"That's okay." He's still attaching the dough as if it's a punching bag. "Like I said, this is just practice."

If he's practicing, he's never going to get much better. She sounds too much like Mom when she says, "Why are you kneading it like that?"

"The bread tastes better if it's done by hand. Don't even get me started on those infernal machines." He says "machines" with an intake of breath just before, hissing it out after like steam escaping an oven. 

"You're right about that, but you're using your hands all wrong." Rory ventures into the kitchen, and its warmth and heady steam envelop her. "You have to fold and turn it. And use the heels of your hands, not your knuckles." She's demonstrating, gloved hands out in front of her, basket hooked high on her arm, imagining a counter--Gran's kitchen counter--in front of her.

Gran. She has to get to Gran's, she's already late--

Tate's smile reaches his whole face, even the splotches of flour on his forehead and cheeks. A step toward her, and his eyes are dark and sparkling as he touches her hands, leaving flour smudges on her gloves. He pulls them off without ever touching her skin. "Earn your treats, Rory. Show me." 

There's a _Bakery Battle_ marathon on the Cooking Channel today. Gran will never know if she's half an hour late.

Rory sets her basket on the counter and plunges her hands into the pliant dough. "Like this," she says, and it's just like being eight again, wrists flexing against the yeast-fueled energy of the dough, fold, push, turn, fold again. 

Gran used to lean over her shoulder, but never like Tate does, breathing warm and savory on her neck, sending ripples of something Rory can't quite name--pleasure? Terror?--coursing down her spine. When she stops to catch her own breath, to chase down a name for what she's feeling, he reaches past her and tears off half the dough, then moves to stand next to her, working his own half carefully, their arms barely brushing. "Like this?" he echoes.

Rory nods, sneaks a sidelong look, sees that Tate, like her, is trying to hide a grin. She wants to reach over and wipe the flour off his cheek with her thumb, but instead she works her dough until it's just right, stretchy and whole and peeling its own residue off her hands.

"I'm trying to perfect this idea I had. My mom used to make orange rolls from one of those paper tubes for special occasions. I figure there has to be a way to make a gourmet version that'll pull people into this neighborhood."

"With your unopened bakery?" What Rory can see of the sales area is pretty junked up. 

"I won't open until the first of the year. I need to develop a signature item first, you know? Like a cronut, but new." He swipes his hand through the air before them, as if he's an old-time movie director framing an imagined marquee. "The Next Big Thing."

Rory nods. Thinks of Gran's binder and Cherry Cream Torte, but doesn't say a word. She doesn't know this guy. She shouldn't trust him. But freckles show through the smudge of flour on his nose like cinnamon sprinkles. She grins and flips her dough over. "Seems to me the first step to The Next Big Thing is getting the base right."

She arrives at Gran's forty minutes late, flour spattered on the cuffs of her red coat like unmelted snow. There's a loaf of warm bread and a pair of passable orange rolls--not yet The Next Big Thing, but better than the cauliflower mash and quinoa salad Mom's sent. If Gran realizes Rory's late, she doesn't mention it.

* * *

During the week the cold intensifies. On Saturday the catcalls are fiercer and more demanding. ( _"Walk by me every week with that basket, never offer me a treat? I know you got something for me under that coat."_ ) Gran forgets more, spends more time staring at the television. But the back door to the bakery is open and Tate is there, surrounded by unfrosted cupcakes and smiling at her with his dazzling white, straight, oh-so-different-from-the-guys-on-the-bus-bench teeth. There's something secret in his smile, and she's not sure she wants to know what it is just yet. 

A whiff of chocolate curls through the air. "You've moved on from the orange rolls?"

"Thought I'd try something simpler first. What's simpler than cupcakes?" She must look dubious, because he quickly says, "I know, everyone does them. But if I can make a perfect Black Forest cupcake, who'll able to stay away? They're more tempting than candy."

He holds an unfrosted cupcake out to Rory. Cherry filling---it looks canned--oozes out of a dimple in its top. Rory sniffs at it. Wrinkles her nose. "Where'd you get your cocoa?"

"That matters? I thought all that stuff about whether it comes from the rain forest or Hershey's was all a bunch of foodie bullcrap. Besides, what matters in a cupcake is the frosting, it's all anyone remembers. Here, try the buttercream." He scoops a spoonful of something cocoa colored out of a bowl on the prep table and holds it out to her. Another grin tugs at the corners of his mouth. This is some kind of challenge, and unlike the guys on the street, he's willing to let her decide if she wants to take it.

Even though Rory doesn't know exactly what the stakes are, she looks Tate straight in the eye and brings his outstretched hand close to her face. Bends toward the spoon and takes it slowly, deliberately into her own mouth. She knows exactly what she's doing, and it's like soda pop in her veins, the way his eyes widen and his breath quickens. She draws her lips back through the frosting after a half-second's hesitation and pulls away, considers. 

"Something's missing," she says. 

"Missing?" The rasp in his voice makes Rory's cheeks heat up.

"Try a pinch of cinnamon. The good kind. Nobody will ever taste it, but it brings the cocoa to the front, over the sugar."

"There are kinds of cinnamon?" 

"You really are helpless, aren't you?" She ducks her head to hide her blush and heads for the pantry. "Let me see what you've got." 

It doesn't seem like such a big deal, today, when Gran forgets to call her Rory Red Coat, and when she wanders into the bedroom and falls asleep when Rory asks her if she wants to make cookies.

* * *

The third Saturday, it's lemon meringue pie. Rory's already marking time by their meetings, though she hasn't told Kari and Ellis about Tate. Not Mom either. Like Gran's torte recipe, there's something deliciously secret about what they're doing, something others would scold and sour if they knew.

"You should chill the bowl and the beaters before you whip the egg whites." She can't believe he doesn't know something so simple.

Tate shakes his head ruefully. "How do you know so much?"

"My grandmother used to be a baker. Had a shop of her own. It was really famous back in the day." Rory takes her coat off and starts rolling out pie crust while she tells Tate the story she's heard from her mother at least once a year for as long as she can remember. "Her Cherry Cream Torte drew customers from all over the city. It was so good Mannheim's Munchies--you know, the people who make Twinkle Cakes and Blintz Bombs?"

Tate nods, but makes a face at the mention of the mass-produced snacks. Good.

"Gran's always said Mannheim's probably uses industrial grade petroleum instead of butter," Rory continues. "Anyway, they offered her an amount of money for the recipe that would have made her fairy-tale rich. When she turned them down, they came up with a horrible sponge cake thing with pink filling and called them--"

"Cherrie Kreme Tortes?" Tate asks. "Those were your Gran's?"

"No, they weren't, which is the whole point. It broke her heart, and she stopped making the real thing." Well, she'd _almost_ stopped. She'd made a Cherry Cream Torte for Rory's fifteenth birthday. Eighteen layers of soft, but still flaky pastry loaded with tart cherry jam, delicate spreads of vanilla buttercream, and rich, creamy custard, all topped with a drizzle of icing. Rory had never eaten anything like it, before or since. ( _"The one perfect thing for the one perfect person," Gran had said. "Once in your life, you deserve to taste this."_ ) "Her bakery just kind of faded away a few years later."

But nobody who'd ever had the real thing could possibly mistake a Cherry Cream Torte for one of Mannheim's snack cakes. A few years ago, Mannheim had tried to rebrand itself with more upscale--but still mass-produced--desserts. So far, they'd failed miserably. In the end, Rory thinks, Gran won. 

Well, not the end. In the end, nobody will win, because in the end, Gran will be gone, faded to nothing.

"Wow." Tate spins a pie plate on the prep table with one finger. "Cherry Cream Torte could have been The Next Big Thing." He looks up at Rory, and his smile has an edge. "I know true bakers can't give up their secrets, but I have to ask." He slides close to Rory, setting her skin tingling. "Has she taught you to make it?"

She can't look away from him; his dancing eyes, the hint of stubble on his jawline, as if he's been up all night working on the pies. She wants to trace it, to see if it's as sharp as it looks up close, every hair a knife blade.

"No. I mean, yes, I guess I wanted to, after I first heard the story." She shakes her head, remembering her attempt to read the crumpled, splotted tucked into the back of Gran's binder. "But Gran has trouble remembering things like that now." 

Tate takes a half step back with another of his tiny shrugs. "Sometimes things like that are better remembered than recreated. It's never as good as you think it's going to be." He smiles, and a waft of warm, sugary breath makes Rory wonder if she's losing her memory, too, because when Tate is this close, she tends to forget what they were talking about. 

"I guess you're right," she says.

That day, Gran is a little better. They manage a batch of shortbread, and Rory has to bite back comparisons she wants to make between Gran's techniques and Tate's. 

"Don't stray from me for too long, Rory Red Coat," Gran says when she sends her on her way. "Even on my bad days, I need to know you're with me. Even when you're late."

"I'm not late. It's just the days getting shorter." Rory brushes a kiss on Gran's cheek before she leaves and wishes Saturday mornings would stretch on forever.

* * *

Tate first kisses her on Saturday Number Five: Boston Cream Pie (which is really cake). Both their lips are sticky with pudding-y filling and chocolate ganache. The ganache is nowhere near as good as Rory remembers Gran's being, there's something missing, an edge to the cocoa, or is it something in the butter? She's tasting a spoonful, eyes squeezed shut to remember what it's missing, when he darts in and presses his lips against hers. The spoon rattles to the floor and her lips part. He presses closer, closer, and Rory chases every pulse with her own lips, saliva mingling with pudding and ganache, every taste distinct.

"Salt," she gasps when he pulls away. "You need a pinch."

He tucks her in close, so she can't see his face, just the warm soft flannel of his shirt. "Sweet Rory," he whispers, and her name sounds like a secret recipe, the perfect pinch of unexpected spice. He's warm, he's safe; he's not slipping away from her like Mom, like Gran, like her friends, and she never wants to step out of his embrace. "You're a wonder in a red coat."

Red Coat. Rory Red Coat. Gran will remember this week. She has to.

The kitchen is steamy, as if all the moisture in the baking cake has been released with the kiss. Rory pushes away. "I have to go soon," she stammers. "Gran needs me."

"I could come with you."

"No, I'm good. I'm really good," she stammers. Gives him a tiny smile as she realizes why she doesn't want him to come. Tate is her secret ingredient, the thing that would hollow her out if he were taken away. 

"You don't think she'd like me?" He pouts, pretending to be hurt. 

"I have no idea what she'd think," Rory admits. "But she's fragile right now." Soufflé. Pie crust. "Maybe in the spring. She always gets better in the spring."

"Okay," Tate hesitates a moment, confusing playing in his eyes, before giving her a smile. "Let's finish this thing."

The Boston Cream Pie (which is really cake) is a little dry, and the ganache hardens into a shell that's tougher than a turtle's, but Tate kisses her again. Despite the forest of eyes and the words that are flung at her, she's safe all the way to Gran's in the bubble of that kiss and his "'Til next Saturday, sweet Rory." 

* * *

"Where r u? Adam looking 4 u"

Ellis's text is almost eight hours old by the time Rory sees it; she skipped Adam's pre-finals party so she'd be able to pull herself out of bed an hour early, spend some time at the bakery with Tate, and still get to Gran's at the usual time. Mom won't notice; she's at the gym by six most Saturdays.

"Hot date," Rory texts back. She hasn't figured out how to explain Tate to her friends. She's tried, but every time she does, her tongue gets heavy and...it's like there's something wrong with it, even though there's not. Just because he's older--she's not sure how much older, there's never enough time to ask all the questions she wants to know the answers to--and she's heard how girls at school talk about other girls who date older guys. This isn't like that at all. She's helping him prepare for the real world, helping him learn what he needs to run a bakery. He needs her, and she likes that feeling. So she throws out texts like this one, "Hot date," and hopes Ellis won't notice it came in before seven on a Saturday morning.

Tate never calls her, never texts her, never even asks for her number. But he's there every Saturday no matter how early she comes, trying new things, luring her off the wintery, slush-covered streets with the scent of the basic sourdough he's perfected. 

He announces each week's attempt at The Next Big Thing with a lifted eyebrow. This week it's cream puffs, done with pre-made frozen pastry. He looks sidelong at her as he admits this. Waiting. Rory opens her mouth, thinks about the stories Mom's told about how carefully Gran rolled out the layers of her torte, and snaps it closed. Smiles. She might give everything else to Tate, but this one secret, she's going to keep as long as she can. "If you want it to taste like every other cream puff in the city, I guess this will work."

"I thought maybe I'd focus on the fillings. But if you want to show me how to do the dough..." He leaves it open, waggles his eyebrows. To show he's teasing? Or to make her think he is.

"Fillings are good. You can do a lot with fillings."

He puts together a mixture of mascarpone cream and mass-produced raspberry jam, holds it up on a spoon for her to lick. It's nothing like the swirl of custard, buttercream, and jam she remembers from her birthday torte, but it's passable. And when he kisses her, the commercial tang of the jam dissolves away.

Gran takes too long to respond to Rory's buzz that morning, and Rory ends up following one of Gran's neighbors into the building. Gran doesn't call her Rory once that week, let alone Rory Red Coat. When Rory gets home, she tells Mom they need to have copies of Gran's key made. Outside doors as well as in.

* * *

The next few weeks are a blur of sugarhigh kisses and pastries, experiments and explorations. None of the boys Rory's dated before have ever been quite as bold as Tate; though his hands are gentle, he doesn't ask for permission to slip them up under her shirt, to circle her waist and pull her closer, or to guide hers to his hips. It just happens, somehow, and before she knows it they're tangled together, Rory's back against the fridge, her hands plunged deep into his hair, losing herself in him while yeast proofs or cookie dough chills or icing sets.

Rory blames the heady scents of the kitchen for the fact that she gets so lost in him; for her slipping grades and distancing friends. She's spending time that should be going to college applications, to school parties, to taking care of Gran on thinking about Tate, on baking with him or planning recipes and surprise suggestions for him. Even in the middle of a class, calc or Spanish or lit, she's doodling macaroons and imagining what his kisses will taste like when they can get fresh strawberries for pies. 

If she hadn't met him in this oasis of warmth and safety and deliciousness amidst the forest of the city, would she have been willing to go farther with him than she ever had before? Would she want his hands on her the way she does? 

If she didn't have so much to offer his bakery, would he even look twice at her?

Gran slips farther than she ever has into December, into winter dark and lethargy. When Rory comes to the apartment, flush and sticky-lipped and bearing cherry rolls and orange cakes and raspberry tarts, Gran sighs and makes a show of eating them, but she takes no interest in what Mom sends, and Rory can't get her to even pick up a whisk. Rory joins Gran on the couch and mocks the Cake Overlord while he shapes rice cereal into castle towers and coats them with fondant. "There's not a single crumb of cake in that thing," she says, but Gran barely blinks. If it wasn't for her early morning experiments with Tate, Rory wonders if she would be able to motivate herself to keep coming every Saturday.

* * *

The ninth Saturday, Tate declares cupcakes passé and pies--even pies that are really cakes--too temperamental--so he goes back to sweet rolls. Orange, cinnamon, and cherry, but he changes the shape. They're really sweet, flavored breadsticks. Tate says the shape makes them easier to eat. "Unrolled Rolls," he says with that same sweep of his hand, and Rory mouths along, "The Next Big Thing."

While they wait for the first batch to bake, he pulls out a box of Mannheim's Cherrie Kreme Tortes. "They've been hard to find lately," he says. "I thought you might want one for old time's sake. Maybe we can work out what your grandmother did differently."

Everything, Rory thinks. Gran did everything differently. She waves it away. 

"Aw, come on, try a bit," he teases, scooping out the chemically pink frosting. "At least help me figure out what they did wrong."

"I told you, it's nothing like hers." It's starting to feel like the one secret she still holds over him. She's given away all her other baking techniques; maybe, like Gran, she'll be empty when she's done giving them away, all that was unique about her absorbed into Tate and his bakery. She thinks maybe that's okay. As long as she holds this one thing over him, he'll never quite drain her dry. She distracts him with kisses, moves them down his throat, where she's always wanted to stray with her tongue, the salty taste of his skin here clearing the too-sweet cream cheese glaze from her tongue, her nostrils, and before she knows it, they've gone farther than kisses, farther than any of their previous make outs.

She's sitting on the desk, legs wrapped around him as he presses her back against the hutchlike shelves that hold folders and cookbooks and a few stray utensils. His hands are under her shirt, she can feel every bit of dough that flecks off his fingers as he trails them in slow, sure circles that rise up either side of her spine, his tongue nipping her neck, then lower, then lower. "Sweet Rory..." he breathes against her, and if his hands didn't know what to do with bread dough two months ago, they certainly know what to do to Rory now. She tilts her head back, ready to give herself over to this, because everything is falling apart, Gran and school and the whole city, so what the hell is she saving herself for? 

She arches her back, reaches behind her to steady herself with a grip on the shelf. He slides a hand around her waist, fingers brushing up, up, up and tracing the edge of her breast. She starts and her hand slips, her bracelet catches on a stack of folders and sends them to the floor. 

"Oops." He grins at her, and the timer for the dough dings. "Can't burn The Next Big Thing." He heads towards the oven; Rory straightens her shirt and bends down to pick up the folders, and an open envelope with a faded newspaper clipping sticking up from it at an angle, as if it's been hastily shoved back in, falls out.

She's seen the clipping before, tucked into the pages of Gran's old recipe binder. "Local Bakery Draws Crowds," the headline crows, and a young, happy, red-headed Gran smiles from the photograph, her face unlined, under the crimson eaves of the shop that was hers then, all hers, holding a tray of Cherry Cream Tortes. 

Highlighted in yellow--new, bright--a single sentence: "The bakery's famous raspberry torte will soon go global; plans are in the works to distribute the signature dessert to specialty grocers around the world." A post-it is attached to the bottom of the article, with a neatly written question: "Do you have it yet?"

Thoughts whirling, Rory turns the envelope over. It's addressed to Tate. Tate Mannheim.

She stares, wild-eyed, at Tate. His back is to her. The kitchen feels more threatening now than the streets outside--knives, glints of copper and steel. How has she never noticed the way the overhead lights played off all the hanging metal?

"You know."

He turns at her breath-caught words, smiling. A mask. His smile's always been a mask. How has she never seen it before?

She holds up the envelope. "You've always known. All this time, you've been--you've been trying to get the recipe from me, haven't you?" Her thoughts race too fast to organize, but she catches hold of one. "Once you knew who I was--or was it before that? Did you pick this spot because you knew I walked by?"

A million denials play across his face, then the smile settles back in. "I should have known better than to keep it from you, Rory. But try to understand. My dad put me under so much pressure, he wanted the recipe his father tried to get all those years ago, he swears it'll make the business profitable again..."

He goes on and on, smooth and smiling, and she waits for him to say she's changed his mind, that he's come to know her and now he doesn't want to take away her one secret, Gran's one secret, but he doesn't. The next words out of his mouth--his wide mouth full of perfect teeth--is a gloat.

"The girl in the red coat. The legendary grandmother. How could I _not_ know who you were, Rory? But it's okay, now. All our secrets are out in the open." He comes closer, slips a hand behind her neck. "Tell me how she did it. You must know."

Rory steps back, shaking his hand free. "I don't."

He's hungry. He's going to devour her. "It's The Next Big Thing. You, Rory. It's always been you."

But it wasn't her. It was Gran, it was the torte, and she's so, so confused.

And something new. Angry. Humiliated. He took advantage of her because she's young. Because she's stupid, stupid, stupid. Because she'd rather believe a guy like Tate would care about her enough to hold her world together a little longer than face the forest of gleaming eyes out on the street. All because of a secret she didn't know.

"No. It's not me."

"Come on, sweet Rory. We'll cut you in. You'll be able to afford college, a car." He's advancing on her, and she reaches back to steady herself on the prep table. Her hand knocks into a bowl full of flour. "Your gran's name will be famous again."

Rory flings a handful of flour in his face and he coughs, stumbles backward. She runs for the door. Laughter chases her down the alley. She flees to Gran's without her coat, hair tangling out of its ponytail, probably leaving a trail of flour, if not breadcrumbs. One of the homeless guys at the bus stop catches her eye and breaks off. "You need help, love?" She doesn't stop long enough to answer.

At the apartment, she buzzes and buzzes and buzzes. When Gran won't answer, she remembers the new key and lets herself in.

Gran's still in bed. Blinking at her hard. Rory can't tell if Gran recognizes her; she stares at the idiots pretending to bake on television as if they hold all the secrets of the universe, when really, the secrets are in Gran, and they're never coming out. 

She's so much further gone than she's ever been. All these weeks Gran's been getting worse and worse and it's Rory's fault, she hasn't pushed the issue, hasn't made Mom see how bad it really is, hasn't insisted they do something. Because of Tate. Who would have taken the last thing holding Gran together.

Rory curls up in the bed next to Gran and cries. She feels like the world's biggest idiot, worse than the pretend bakers making cakes that aren't cakes. "I'm an idiot, Gran. Such an idiot." 

"Not as bad as this guy. He thinks he can make gluten-free cookies that don't taste like hockey pucks." Without looking at Rory, Gran reaches over and smooths her hair, and Rory, eight years old again, escapes into sleep.

* * *

When she wakes up, the bedroom door is shut and she's alone.

She ventures out into the main living area, blinking into the late-afternoon slant of sunlight. There's a fruity, sweet scent filling the apartment; she takes it in one deep breath and remembers her fifteenth birthday. She spins around. 

Tate is in the kitchen. 

"I brought your coat." He shoots her that full-toothed grin. Shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows, hands dusted with flour. "The guys at the bus stop told me which building. Pushed buttons until someone recognized the coat."

"Gran." Rory spins again, finds Gran curled into a corner of the sofa, holding the coat, staring at a blank television screen. "What did you do to her?" She starts toward Gran, but Tate grabs her arm, shoves a forkful of something in her face.

"Taste it, Rory. Just taste. The lines will stretch out to the avenues, all the way downtown." 

Why does she open her mouth? Gran's face is spotted with flour, lined with tear tracks, and still Rory does as Tate orders. She tastes. Sweet sickness, layers of pastry that crumble into dust in her mouth, the buttercream layer thick and tasteless as glue.

"It took a lot of work to get her to tell me the basics, but you just have to be firm with her." He tastes what Rory left on the spoon, makes a face, purses his lips together and shakes his head. "It's missing something. I can buy frozen dough for the pastry layers. But the filling--I can't read the notecard and she gave out on me halfway through making the custard. What am I missing?"

"Gran." She shakes him off, kneels in front of her grandmother. Gran shrinks away from her as though Rory's the threat. Tate's taken everything. His smile curves like a knife. No one is coming to save them.

Rory stands and faces him, jabs a finger at the door. "Go." 

"Don't you understand? This is it, The Next Big Thing. We'll have them lined up around the block, all the way up here, begging for it. My dad will make her famous."

"You've made her--you've destroyed her. She's gone--" Anger, the same streak of it she felt in the bakery, surges through her. She holds onto it. Lets it fill her. " _Look_ at her, Tate. Look what you did to her."

"You told me yourself she's going anyway." He's backing up, and there's a new note in his voice. Fear. Rory can make him afraid. "You don't think she wants to take her best recipe out of the world with her, do you? If she were in her right mind, she'd tell you that. She give you this last gift."

"And I'd give it to you, is that it?" Rory shakes her head. "She'd rather--I'd rather she die and never make it again than--than this. Than _you_."

"You don't mean that, sweet Rory." He grasps her arms, pulls her in, and kisses her, bending her back against the warmth of the oven. "It's over, Rory. She _did_ give me everything, all but the last few ingredients in the custard. It's already mine." He leans into her, filling the world. "It could be ours."

A voice cracks Rory's panic. "She's too good for you." There's a _thunk_ , and Tate goes down on one knee. Gran is standing behind him, hefting a frying pan with hands that could barely manage a remote control a few hours ago. "And so, quite frankly, am I."

"Gran--what--" Rory gasps for breath, but there's no time for questions. Tate is down but not out. He stumbles to his feet, hand on his head. Pushing Gran back toward the living room, Rory keeps her eyes fixed on him while she draws a butcher knife from the block. Points it at Tate, at that faintly stubbled jawline. "Go. I don't care what you do with the recipe, just go. Don't ever come back."

Tate swipes the back of his hand over his mouth, and his smile is a snarl. "Next Saturday morning, you won't believe what you see. Or smell. I'll put it directly in your path, Rory. Everything you could have had. The Next Big Thing." 

He's lying. Even if the bakery opens next week, even if he makes anything approaching Cherry Cream Torte, he'll never had the crowds Gran did. "You don't know what it means, to bake with your heart and soul." It's the most important thing Gran taught her, and the one thing Tate never learned. "To make the one perfect thing for that one person who means the world to you, that's better than baking for the whole world. Go."

"You could come with me," he says, as if the knife isn't there. "You could be my one perfect person, my inspiration. You're too young to give your life to--" His gaze flicks to Gran. "This dusty rent-controlled tomb."

She'll find another way, another path. "Go, Tate," she says, one last time. Turns to Gran when the door clicks closed, drops the knife from her shaking hand. He filled her world for weeks, and now he's gone, now she's sent him away.

But she's not empty. He is.

Gran holds her close. Kisses the top of her head. "At least he pissed me off enough to knock me out of that haze. Who was he, Rory? There was something familiar about him."

"No one," Rory says. "He was no one."

Gran sniffs. "Throw this mess all out. All of it. I'm going to show you how to make a real Cherry Cream Torte."

"I thought you didn't remember."

Gran smiles, her yellowed teeth promising all the sunlight in the world. "I want to show you, Rory Red Coat. Before it gets dark again. I want you to know."


End file.
